


Gatherings

by marathemara



Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-01-30 09:35:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21426061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marathemara/pseuds/marathemara
Summary: The war is technically won. Let's make it not happen again.(Esther's Clinic post-War of the Spark. References character deaths inWar of the Spark.)
Kudos: 5





	1. Congregation at Dawn

Esther awoke to deafening silence in a world that was no longer on fire.

The ceiling above her belonged to the clinic, and the coarse sheet that covered her belonged to its beds. Her limbs were where they should be. A headache made its presence known behind her right eye.

_ Why is it so quiet? _ The headache pulsed, and she felt someone listening to her thoughts. She recoiled--

_ Hold.  _ The voice reminded Esther uncomfortably of her own bedside manner.  _ Your wife wanted to know when you were awake. _

_ Who are you, and how do you know my wife? _

The listener chuckled. A face bubbled up through the fog of the recent past. A man desperate not to look tired. Shimmering blue cloth. A mug of coffee.

Uh-oh.  _ Guildpact!? _

_ Good. You weren't as high as you looked. Dimir performance aids are known to have side effects. _

Moments from the past...day? More than that?... began to return. Force fields, and whining machinery, and so many patients.  _ What happened? _

_ Come downstairs when you’re ready, and we’ll explain it. Zofia’s making lunch.  _ He withdrew, leaving Esther alone with scattered thoughts.

She tried to center herself, but was interrupted by a complaint from her stomach. “All right,” she grumbled back, and used the next breath to push herself upright.

Sunlight bled through the curtains behind her, enough to see the pile of clothes on a chair next to the bed. Esther investigated slowly, unfolding the pile and laying it out in front of her. Undergarments, definitely hers. A soft wool tunic and pants, deep midday blue with silver trim. A matching cape with the insignia of a rank she had been eligible but never evaluated for a decade ago. Brand-new boots that fit as though they had been made for her.

Esther considered the insignia, and the newness of the clothes, until her stomach reminded her that people were waiting for her. She dressed carefully in the uniform of a Lyev officer, heaved herself out of bed, and set off down the hallway, one hand braced on the wall.

***

Her slow journey back to civilization was interrupted by a hearty cheer. Confused, she sat down on the bottom stair and blinked at the crowd in the clinic’s break room, all of whom seemed happy to see her.

The gorgon guildmaster of the Golgari Swarm. Beside her, the Living Guildpact, who met Esther’s eyes and nodded.  _ Welcome back, Doctor. _ Tamiyo, still pointing to a scroll floating in midair as if Esther’s appearance had interrupted a lecture. An elf in clothes that did not belong to Selesnya, holding the hand of a flame-haired woman who was not quite Izzet. Lavinia and Narset, Ajani and Petrik, a long-haired Tarkiri man in leather, and more people Esther could not quite see behind them. And the longer Esther looked, the more she was sure that most of them were planeswalkers.

“Settle down!” Zofia emerged from the crowd in the general direction of the kitchen. “She’s had a rough week like all the rest of us. Give her a moment.” She balanced a breakfast tray on Esther’s knees and bent down to kiss her forehead before sitting down on the stair next to her. “How do you feel?”

“Confused,” Esther said. The tray held a plate of scrambled eggs and a toasted bun, and a mug of what smelled like her favorite tea. “What did I do?” Her stomach stopped complaining for a moment, so she took a bite of the bun. It may have been the best bread she’d ever eaten.

“We’ve saved a lot of lives over the last few days.” Zofia smiled and rested an arm across Esther’s shoulders. “Dunno how much you remember--we were both pretty fuzzy toward the end--but Jace says says things would be a lot worse if we hadn’t been there.”

“What things?” Esther demanded around a mouthful of egg.

Lavinia came over, and Esther fought the urge to salute. “The city was invaded,” Lavinia explained, squatting against the wall to look Esther in the eye. “By an extraplanar army led by an elder dragon.”

Esther nodded, another fragment of memory falling into place. “The Chamber of the Guildpact?”

“Destroyed by the entry portal,” interrupted a man Esther recognized from newspaper portraits. Niv-Mizzet’s assistant Ral Zarek.

“And I assume, based on our continued existence, that these invaders failed to conquer us?”

Lavinia explained, with interjections from the crowd. By the time Esther had finished eating, she had learned

  * That now-former Azorius guildmaster Dovin Baan had helped to coordinate the invasion;
  * That planeswalkers had been summoned from countless other worlds to defend Ravnica;
  * That Niv-Mizzet had been murdered and resurrected, and may or may not have become the new embodiment of the Guildpact;
  * That Vitu-Ghazi had risen on its roots and wrestled with a giant crocodile-headed stone zombie (she wasn’t sure she believed that one);

and many other things she was not sure she understood.

As Esther processed all these stories, she glanced around the crowd for someone she expected to see in a gathering of planeswalkers. Not finding him, she raised a finger, cutting off the Guildpact (former Guildpact?)’s explanation of the metaphysics of a Meditation Realm.

“Sorry, but...where’s Gideon?”

For the first time in months, Jace Beleren found himself at a loss for words.


	2. Wake of Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chandra and Esther mourn Gideon together, with Zofia and Nissa close by in case someone breaks down.

“I got this,” said the not-Izzet woman, scrambling out from behind Beleren to sit on the floor in front of Esther. Her pointy-eared girlfriend reached after her, then thought better of it. “Gids was...I mean...aw, shit, maybe I don’t have this. You knew him?”

Esther drank the last of her coffee while she thought about how to answer the question. She made eye contact with Pointy Ears briefly over the mug, and Pointy Ears nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “That’s...not an unreasonable thing to say. Let’s maybe have this conversation somewhere quiet?”

“Huh? Oh, right.” Not Izzet blushed, and scrambled to her feet again, making room for Esther to stand up.

_ Kitchen? _ Zofia thought at Esther.

_ Yeah. _ Esther headed in that direction, making sure Not Izzet was following out of the corner of her eye.

_ Want me there? _

_ Yeah. _

***

Esther set her breakfast tray down by the kitchen sink and leaned against another counter. Not Izzet hopped up on the counter opposite and sat cross-legged. Zofia began gathering dishes, staying close enough to keep an eye on them.

“All right,” Esther said as Not Izzet made herself comfortable. “Let’s start with who you are and how you know my ex.”

Not Izzet blushed even harder. “Um. I’m Chandra, and Gideon...was also my ex.”

“Was,” Esther repeated. Pointy Ears was now also in the kitchen, helping Zofia with the dishes. “There are a couple of ways you could mean that, but I suspect you’re telling me he’s—“

“Dead, yeah,” Chandra interrupted. “Though he did kinda save everyone on the way. He gave Liliana his force shield thing and it let her talk the zombie gods into ripping out Bolas’s spark.”

“I don’t know what half of those things are,” Esther said cautiously, “but that does sound like Gideon.”

“We don’t know that he’s dead,” Pointy Ears added. “No one’s found him; he could’ve planeswalked away as he fell.”

“Or he could’ve done that, and then still have hit the ground anyway,” said Chandra. “Ugh. At least if he’s dead, he’ll be somewhere nice. His plane has an afterlife, right?”

“Does it?” Esther asked. “He never told me much about his childhood.” Thinking about Gideon being dead didn’t feel like anything yet. It just kind of existed.

“Yeah, he didn’t talk about the past much,” Chandra said. “But you’re right, that was a really Gids thing to do, sacrificing himself for everyone.”

“Sometimes I think he had a death wish,” Esther mused. “That could just be that I met him right after he sparked, when he’d…” She shook her head. “Some things he told me in confidence as my patient. Oh dear.”

“What happened?” Chandra leaned forward, almost losing her balance on the counter.

“He promised to visit when he was done with something on Dominaria.” Now it felt like something, and it was hard to breathe and her eyes were full of water. “He nev—he said he’d come back and he never did.” Zofia hurried over, put an arm around Esther’s waist, and held her while she watched her breathing.

“I wanted to be his friend, after we figured it out,” she said when she felt like she could speak. “And now I can’t.”

Chandra hopped down off the counter and reached under Zofia’s arm to hug Esther. “Me too,” she whispered. “And it sucks. But we can be each other’s friends, right?”

“Yeah.” Esther nodded. “We can do that.”

_ Planeswalkers of Ravnica. Planeswalkers of the Gatewatch. _ A voice echoed in Esther’s head. Chandra jumped back, rubbing her forehead as if something had struck her.  _ Attend the Guildpact _ .

“What happened?” Zofia asked.

“Somebody’s talking to us,” Esther said. It wasn’t a voice she’d heard before. “What’s the Gatewatch?”

“That’s us,” Chandra said. She and Pointy Ears were already halfway out the door. “Us and Jace and Gideon and…” The kitchen door closed behind her.

“What did they say?” Zofia let go of Esther and went back to setting up the complex cogwork of the clinic’s dish washer.

“Attend the Guildpact. Does that mean Niv-Mizzet really…” Come to think of it, the voice had reminded her a little bit of Dragonlord Ojutai. Maybe that was just what dragons sounded like.

“If it is him, you’d better go. Let me know what wisdom he has for us.” Zofia sounded facetious. Esther had never been quite sure how she felt about her guildmaster. Former guildmaster? Azorius probably needed a new Supreme Arbiter too, now that Esther thought of it--

\--right. Going. “I’ll let you know what he says.”

***

The break room had more people in it than she’d expected. Tamiyo and Narset were there, along with their Tarkiri friend, but Ajani had left. Jace, Petrik, and Ral Zarek had gone, but Mihail was there, playing checkers with a youth in white robes.

Esther cleared her throat. “Where did--”

Lavinia spoke up from behind her. “Out in the plaza. I’ve been asked to accompany you; it’s still busy out there.” Esther nodded.

Mihail looked up from the checkerboard. “Everyone just got up and left all of a sudden. Like they’d all gotten the same message at once.”

“I think they did,” Esther replied. “I got it too, so we’d better go.”


End file.
